I will be recognized by him!

'Mind manipulation formation!' She made a mental note and grimaced at how simple yet complicated it was.

Facing them once more, Tenji smiled. "The formation works well with your thoughts, according to your mana, and grade score will determine its effectiveness and form it takes."

All students groaned at the explanation, feeling they had no chance of ever getting to the level of their professor.

"The formation attacks the opponent, making them anxious and on their toes which drives out all reason to stay calm."

The students nodded their heads and jotted down his words in their spellbooks.

"While distracted, the formation would attach itself onto the victim without any knowledge and transmit the slightest body movements to the creator of the formation."

A male student raised his hand to question something he had in mind.

He has unruly short taupe-brown hair, with bangs that reach just below his eyes. His emerald-green eyes focused on Tenji.

"What would happen if the opponent proves smarter? I mean doesn't react whatsoever or can counter the formation?"

Tenji's smile only grew to the question. "Smart question, Farhad!"

Grinning from ear to ear, Farhad raised his chin in pride at the compliment he got from the professor and this earned him glares from the majority of the other students who instantly got jealous.

Reluctantly, they turned their attention back to Tenji, awaiting his response to the question.

"If an opponent decides not to get into a defensive mode and immediately switches to nullify your formation through an attack, the formation once making contact with the opponent could kill them..."

Gasp!

The students all shared uncertain and disturbed looks at his explanation.

The one who was more shaken by the revelation was Ara, her eyes widened and her breath hitched.

'I-I would have been dead?' She stared at her spellbook, unable to look up anymore as her skin paled.

Tenji facepalms and massages the side of his forehead. "It would be best if you all allowed me to complete my explanation before jumping to a conclusion."

There was a deafening silence as their attention was again pulled toward Tenji.

"... only if their grade score is lower than yours but the formation given to you all can only stun and leave anyone immobile for 12 hours, but if they are of a higher grade score, it would only do a bit of damage by halving the grade score for a total of 2 hours–well the weak formation I had given does that."

There was a collective sigh of relief from the students, yet they were still weary about the first part–Tenji was several grade scores higher than them.

All looked over at Ara with pity, feeling she would have been in a lot of danger if she didn't react as expected.

Ara had been quiet all the while, deep in thought about being careful about irking the professor. 'He would try to stun me over a drawing?'

"In some situations, you could tell your opponent about half of what the formation does, that way you could either be bluffing and they still go according to plan or they are adamant and suffer a halving of their mana grade score." Tenji subconsciously had a wicked grin as he thought back to all he had put in place to create the formation.

"Professor Tenji, about the deflection, isn't it possible?" Someone behind Farhad spoke up, anxious about a backlash on the formation when facing a tough opponent.

"The weakened formation can be deflected by a sorcerer who has a grade score of over 100..."

All students gasped in shock once more, this was over the scores of their professors in the academy and fairly a good number of those in Meiji.

They all shared worried looks on how Tenji could come up with such a dangerous formation and call the one he had given them, weak.

Sensing the tension in the air, Tenji cleared his throat. "Ahem.."

"As I had said, it is purely experimental and I frankly haven't found anyone above that grade score willing to go through a test run." He let out a chuckle to ease the tension.

None could smile or laugh at the reference as all he did was create more worry on how their professor could be given a special class to teach students his self-created subject.

Farhan sensed no one was going to speak after the revelation and volunteered to ask one more question that had been bothering him.

"Why were we given the weakened formation instead of the perfect one?"

'Curious students, a bane to the information I wish to dispense.' Tenji laughed in his thoughts but had an obvious smile.

There was no way he was going into detail and was eagerly expecting the bell ringing sound to save him from going to details after giving them a little bit of hope.

"I would give only the best students who show great progress in using what I teach in the best possible way."

'Luckily enough for me, I'm immune to my creations.' Tenji had a growing smirk as he thought about how he could guess there would be a student who would have him as a target of his creation.

Murmurs followed and they all spoke in low mumbles, the majority unsure about what he meant by best–his standards were high and no one since his two-year stay had gotten close to being complimented by him during each graduation.

Placing her palm on the paper, Ara clenched and squeezed the ripped-out paper from her spellbook, her blue eyes faintly glowing with renewed determination.

'I will be the best and be recognized by him!' She thought with her teeth gritted.

That formation was her one way of exacting her revenge on him for humiliating her and testing out its capabilities on someone with his grade score.

Riiiiinnng!

Tenji had to stop himself from whopping with joy for the timely save.

Instead, he pushed back his hair and turned towards the whiteboard, and commanded it to shut down for the day.

'I get to check out Maiyu and Asahi.' He hummed at the thought of making a brief visit before leaving for his home.

When he turned around, hoping they were all scurrying for the front door, he did a double take on why they all sat without saying a word and eager eyes focused on him.

"Did I miss something after the bell rang?!" His sweat dropped and felt uneasy by their silence.

*****

A/N

I would really appreciate your comments and support of this novel with your power stones. Your active comments would motivate me to write more chapters.

Discord server link which has the character reference of all main descriptions of my characters ┐

https://discord.gg/NhMzNqgzwn

¶ Any idea why the students didn't leave immediately after the bell was rung?